Resident Evil: Degeneration

Though not a game, I wanted to write up a few thoughts after watching Resident Evil: Degeneration. If you don't know, Degeneration is a full-length CG animated movie produced internally at Capcom, featuring Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. This is finally a Resident Evil movie that can be taken into canon. Apparently taking place not too long after RE4, it also serves to bridge the Raccoon City games with the newer games by giving a broad view of the workings of the worldwide bio terror situation and the people and organizations that may or may not carry on the Umbrella legacy. In particular, I know from viewing an RE5 trailer that at least one company in Degeneration is relevant to the upcoming game. There's a lot of material in Degeneration that Capcom could draw upon for future games.

I went into Degeneration with very low expectations and came away pleasantly surprised. No, it's not a top-notch story... and the models and animations aren't up to Pixar or Square-Enix standards. But the best thing that I can say about Degeneration is that Capcom didn't bite off more than they could chew. They made a movie that was not more ambitious than their abilities, and as such, none of the quirks seem out of place in that context. By which I mean, the quality of the animation, the story, and the acting is more or less on the same level, so it was very consistent overall, with no particular moment seeming particuarly poorly animated or acted within the context of this movie. It's a far cry from high art, but it should be inoffensive to Resident Evil fans.

The biggest complaint I have about the story is that there are some connections that are just too coincidental without a good explanation. For example, Leon and Claire both have a good reason to be at the airport where the first half of the movie takes place, but it's still a bit much of a coincidence for them to meet up unplanned. There's another coincidence concerning two new characters that I found a bit hard to swallow. The story can also be a bit much to take in, with lots of people, companies, organizations, with convoluted connections and double-crossing. The best thing about this is that it helps set up the game series for a future without Umbrella, but in the context of a hour-and-a-half movie, it's easy to miss some details. There aren't any notable scares, but the story does its job for expanding the foundation of the Resident Evil universe and providing some context for zombie shooting and lab explosions.

Degeneration's visuals aren't of the quality that you would see in a theatrically-released movie, but they are commendable for a straight-to-DVD/BluRay release. The technical quality is flawed, but consistent. My biggest gripe is that the lip syncing is completely off. I assumed this was because it was dubbed from Japanese, but after watching the special features, I found that there was only English voice acting from the beginning. Capcom actually used motion capture to get the animation for facial expressions, which was a fine idea in theory, but no effort was made to match the voice actors' performances with the motion capture data. I find this to be disapointing because when I watch RE5 trailers, I see that Capcom had no trouble syncing up mouth movements for the game.

Some fans may be sad to see that the second half of the movie has almost no zombies, but there's plenty of boss monster action to suffice. Since I went in with such low expectations, I'm not sure that I knew what I was looking for. If anything, I was hoping for some more classic "so bad they're good" lines from Leon, but I didn't really get that.

I would definitely recommend that fans of Resident Evil see Degeneration to get a better view of how the world of Resident Evil works without Umbrella. It may make you roll your eyes once or twice, but it's a commendable effort from Capcom and I would very much like to see some more projects like this, so long as they save the best scenarios for the games themselves.